Grant Morrison is a very well known name to SuicideGirls. In fact people have been bugging me for years to get an interview with him on here. Well now its done and Ive asked him all my burning questions. We talked about drugs, comics such as his new book for DC Comics called Seven Soldiers, some sex and going to school for the orange juice.

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Grant, are you taking a break from work today?

Grant Morrison: I wish I could take a break! I'm wrapping up my novel the IF - right now because I'm kind of over the deadline. I'm also doing this Shining Knight comic for DC so I don't have much time on my hands.

DRE: Is the IF a full length novel?

GM: So far it's about 320 pages and I'm getting near to the editing stage. It's been a long hard slog and I'm looking forward to relaxing.

DRE: What's the novel about?

GM: It's about an ex-special forces SAS soldier who gets kidnapped and is forced to write the manifesto of a terrorist group. The terrorist group is composed of teenagers who claim to come from outer space [laughs]. It's a bit like 'Children of the Damned' meets 'A Clockwork Orange' and the basic idea is what might happen if children decided to go to war with adults. The hero has to write the account of what happens and I have to write about him writing it.

DRE: Is it a totally linear novel or does it go off like some of your comic work?

GM: It's got a pretty straight high concept and a simple thriller plot but within that concept we explore a lot of weird stuff and look at the world in a different kind of way as seen through the eyes of these unearthly youngsters.

DRE: Your new comic book for DC Comics, Seven Soldiers, is that a miniseries that crosses over into other books?

GM: It's not so much that. The whole thing is something I've decided to call a mega-series because no one has done anything like it before so it's down to me to give it a daft name. I've done seven four-issue miniseries featuring a bunch of C-list superheroes from the DC Comics back catalogue. It's a bit like one of those celebrity reality shows where a gang of has-beens get their 15 minutes of fame and a chance to prove what they can do. So there are seven characters and each character gets four books which tell a very distinct story and reintroduce that character to the audience. Each of the four issues are also self-contained reads because I wanted to try a completely modular story. If you read them all together it comes together like a Robert Altman movie. Every one of them connects and something that someone does in the Mister Miracle book, for instance, might have an effect in the Shining Knight book six months later. It ends up being about seven people who have to save the world without meeting one another. And unlike traditional superheroes these characters are all quite reluctant - they're entertainers or accident survivors or exiles with special abilities who find themselves in a situation they're forced to use all their resources to deal with.

It's a purely conceptual superhero team and it's basically me making up a bunch of stuff for some really obscure DC titles that I felt had the potential to be rethought, upgraded, updated and charged with new energy. You can't do much to change Superman and Batman or any of the big name icon characters. But the Seven Soldiers heroes are all ones I felt were really strong and adaptable and no one had given them a lot of thought since they'd been created. I've come up with a few little interesting franchise ideas for Warner Bros with these series. We've seen many comics turned into movies and TV shows so I wanted to take some unregarded characters and polish them up into top notch properties for my corporate masters.

DRE: Was the book totally your idea or were you asked to do it by DC?

GM: It was totally my idea. DC wanted me to do Superman, which I agreed to do as well but Seven Soldiers was my own pitch. I was just finishing up my long run on New X-Men, which was an interesting experience but quite restrictive because so much has been done with that concept and the fans have so many ideas about what the X-Men should and shouldn't be. It makes it quite hard to move or innovate without offending somebody. And any changes you make in a book like that will always be reversed or overturned because the licensors come along to demand colorful costumes or a return to traditional values or whatever. So for me to come off comic book's biggest property and go back to playing smaller halls, if you like, was an attempt to get back to a place where I could try out some new ideas. I just wanted to do some mad stuff [laughs]. I couldn't do that with the big iconic characters so I had to pick the losers no one cares about because there is a lot more creative freedom there so I could push the boundaries.

DRE: It doesn't sound dissimilar to what you did with Animal Man, but I'm guessing it will be more straightforward than that book.

GM: It will be like Animal Man in the sense that I've taken the whole idea of each revamp really seriously and I've completely reconsidered these characters and their relevance to the way we live today. There isn't any of the trippy metatextual stuff from Animal Man but it's a pretty straight up story about ground level, grass roots super-people and how they get by. The ones who don't have mansions of secret headquarters on the moon.

Most of the stories are set in a DC Universe version of New York City. Many Marvel Comics are set in New York but we've rarely seen it in the DC Universe. We usually see stories in Gotham City, Metropolis, Star City or some other made up place. The New York in Seven Soldiers is known as 'the Cinderella city' because it's got two 'ugly sisters' on either side - Batman's brooding Gotham City and Superman's futuristic Metropolis. What we've done to make the location even more distinctive is finish off all of New York's big architectural projects that were never completed. So there is the huge Chinatown development with Confucius Plaza, which was an idea that was floated once and never followed through. There is also an impressive hotel as proposed by Gaudi himself, which we've got standing proudly in our fictional city. There's Frank Lloyd Wright's proposed Ellis Island development, which is an amazing futuristic domed city idea and turns up as the location for The Guardian issue 3. Then we have the Mid-Manhattan Expressway which again was never built but which runs directly though this fictionalized New York City. For this series, I wanted to create a world that's very textual and tactile almost like a virtual reality. The location is very important.

DRE: Do you get to New York City very often?

GM: I've been there loads of times just to hang out. I was in Rhinebeck, New York not too long ago.

DRE: I just got The Filth and the second Doom Patrol trade paperback.

GM: Oh good, everyone hated The Filth when it was coming out but people seem to be digging it now. It's been one of my best-selling books.

DRE: Some books only seem to get to the right audience once it gets collected.

GM: Yeah and I think Seaguy is going to be the same. Some people seem to have a real problem dealing with these things on a monthly, serialized basis but the collections always do well.

DRE: Have you ever thought about not doing books on a monthly basis, at least for books like The Filth?

GM: I did ask to do something like that for Seaguy and We3. I wanted them to come out as 96 page Manga-size books but DC wouldn't listen to me. What they decided to do is release the story to the comic book market as single issues, which is fine because the comic books fans are the ones at the frontlines of the hobby so it's nice to let them see new material first. I like the Manga size because I'd prefer the new material to reach a younger audience and that's what they seem to be picking up. The traditional comic store market is growing increasingly older and more conservative which can make it hard to launch new characters or stories in that arena.

DRE: In anticipation of this interview I read The Filth and the second Doom Patrol trade paperback in one sitting. I don't know if I would recommend for people to do that.

GM: Doom Patrol will cheer you up and The Filth will depress you. Or is it the other way around? Uppers and downers. If you juggle them you'll be all right.

DRE: You've spoken quite openly about the drugs you've done over the years. I had a teacher years ago that was also a priest and we had an argument over drugs. He said that the same feelings you can reach with drugs you can get to naturally with meditation.

GM: That's not true but I do understand what he's trying to say. Theoretically, you can recreate all states of consciousness just by thinking about them but having tried both meditation and drugs and often both at the same time I'm not sure about this one. It's a bit like saying you can recreate the feeling of a Thanksgiving Dinner using meditation. Maybe you could but why would you? Meditation can take you to some places that some drugs can also take you too but I don't believe meditation can reproduce a full-on acid experience or a high dose mushroom or DMT trip, nor would it be helpful if it did. It can reproduce something like an ecstasy experience. Meditators who claim they can recreate all of these drug states are probably either unfamiliar with the drugs or they're being slightly disingenuous about the whole issue.

DRE: You mentioned three drugs right there, when you did Animal Man was it from doing one drug and was The Invisibles with another drug and etc?

GM: The weird thing with me is that I'm into magic more than I am drugs and I started my psychedelic experiments very late, as an adjunct to my magical work. I ate a little bit of hash when I was 24 and I had some mushrooms when I was 28 but otherwise I was totally straight edge until I was 31. I was in a psychedelic punk band where we didn't drink, smoke or take drugs! I only got into drugs when I felt sorted emotionally enough to deal with the effects and I had good magical reasons for doing so. Then in 90's I joined the rave party and spent every single day of the decade getting totally wrecked on mind-altering substances which, I have to admit, I enjoyed immensely. I was never keen on stimulants like cocaine and speed because they did nothing useful or interesting for me but I loved the psychedelic drugs which could twist my head, erase my name and address, open up my subconscious and turn my brain into a super-conductor, so I dosed like a madman for ten years, studied the effects and wrote it all down in The Invisibles and Flex Mentallo in particular. Zenith, Animal Man and Arkham Asylum are pretty straight edge and Doom Patrol shows the influence of shrooms from around the time of those Insect Mesh issues but I was mostly doing it straight. The 90s work emerged from the cockpit of a rocket-driven rollercoaster of LSD, cannabis, mushrooms, DMT, 2CB, ecstasy and champagne.

DRE: How about now?

GM: The Filth was downers.

DRE: Did you specifically take those to see what would happen with The Filth?

GM: I didn't really take them. I was just coming off the high that was the 90's and it's all there on the page. The new stuff is all inspired by music and nature and seems a lot more effortless, I suppose. It's like The White Album after Sergeant Pepper and Yellow Submarine.

DRE: People want these kinds of questions answered.

GM: It's best to know the truth because people have a lot of weird ideas about what I do with my time.

DRE: I read a lot about how The Invisibles was so personal and autobiographical for you. I haven't seen your plays but have you ever done straight autobiography?

GM: Not really. Pop Mag!c is a book I'm doing right now which is kind of an account of all the occult stuff I've studied and the personal system of magic I've developed over the years so it has a lot of autobiography in it. Otherwise I tend to turn events in my life into the symbolic material that fills the stories. All the autobiographical stuff ends up in the work - if I'm feeling depressed, I'll call the depression something like Primordial Annihilator and send the Justice League in to kick its arse. The Invisibles was mostly stuff that was actually happening to me. I was up on a sacred mesa in New Mexico doing acid with a medicine man and all that. The dialogue for that whole sequence, in fact, was based on tape recordings I made of conversations I had with my friends on the mesa. A lot of stuff went straight into the book, such as going to Ladakh or Ulruru or San Francisco sex clubs.

DRE: Would you rather do fewer comics and more of something else?

GM: I wouldn't mind but in 2004 I wrote a novel, a screenplay for DreamWorks and something like 40 comics, among other things. It would be nice to have a year where I only have to do one major project so there would be more time to make music or travel and hang out with friends. I still love comics and I guess I can't stop coming back to them but I don't think I would want to write a long-running monthly series again. I've said that before though.

DRE: What was the screenplay for DreamWorks about?

GM: It's a movie about Halloween called Sleepless Knights.

DRE: I read that sometimes you would write about stuff in The Invisibles then it would actually happen.

GM: I got so enmeshed in it that I was producing holographic voodoo effects and found that I could make stuff happen just by writing about it. At the conclusion of volume one, I put the King Mob character in a situation where he was being tortured and he gets told that his face is being eaten away by bacteria and within a few months my own face was being eaten away by infection. I still have the scar. It's a pretty cool scar to but at the time it was really distressing. Then I had the character dying and within a few months, there I was dying in the hospital of blood poisoning and staph aureus infection. As I lay dying, I wrote my character out of trouble and somehow survived. I used the text as medicine to get myself out of trouble. Writing became a way of keeping myself alive.

As soon as I was out of hospital I made sure my character had a good time and got a laid a lot and within months I was having the time of my life.

DRE: Why do comics enthrall you so much?

GM: Magic. It was always really fascinating to me that Superman was so much older than me and yet I could come along and write adventures with Superman in them and add to his life story. Then I could die and Superman would keep going, with other people writing stories to keep him alive. He's more real than I am because he has a longer lifespan and more influence, so this notion of the 'real' 2-dimensional world of the comics and what it had to say to the 'real' 3-dimensional world of non-fictional people. That really connected with me in a big way and helped me grapple with big ideas about the universe and life and death. I wanted to really 'make contact' with that world and bargain with its inhabitants. I saw it as the lynchpin of my magic. The comic universes are living breathing alternate worlds we can visit. And, if we're lucky enough to be comic book writers we get to play directly with the inhabitants and environments of the 2nd dimension. I wanted to travel in those worlds. By the time I was doing The Invisibles I had gotten past the idea of just putting a drawing of myself in a comic, as I did in Animal Man. I wanted to treat the story like a real continuum. I wanted to really get involved with the comic, in the two dimensional surface of the comic itself and at the point of interface where 2-d becomes 3-d and then touches 4-d. I wanted to see if I could exchange places with a comic book character, so I made myself look like King Mob, and started to have adventures so I would have stuff to write about. I wasn't blowing up military installations or killing Japanese terrorists but I was running around the world in bunker boots and black vinyl, doing magic and meeting all these amazing girls who were actually getting off with King Mob's spirit in my body.

DRE: Would you throw yourself into something like you did with The Invisibles again?

GM: I'd do it again because I can't help it but I haven't been doing much more than sitting in my room writing lately, so I need to get out and about again. The same sort of thing happened with The Filth except I used a lot of the bad elements of my life. I like to surrender to and immerse myself in the environment of the comic book. The experience always teaches me something important.

DRE: In the 1980's Jim Valentino was a somewhat well known autobiographical comic book artist. When his autobiographical work was reprinted in the 90s he considers the superheroes that he works on to be adolescent power fantasies but he needs to do them for fiscal reasons. Is that the case for you?

GM: I've never felt that I 'had to' write superhero stories in lieu of more honest work. The superheroes work just fine for me and seem to be able to express all manner of things I need to express. The superhero as a metaphor can carry a lot of weight and meaning if you want it to. All stories come from someone's experience and say at least something about the human condition by their very nature. It all depends on the audience. I think comics were more interesting when they were written for children because when people write for children it seems to free them up to be less self-conscious. Traditional American superhero comics are being written for an older audience now. I think that since superhero comics started being aimed at adults they've become a bit too self conscious and a bit less visionary. I don't know why that is because adults should enjoy fantastical stuff as much as any child.

DRE: Who would you like to be reading the superhero comic books that you do?

GM: I write for the intelligent 14 year old because that's how old I was when I really got into comic books in a big way. I was a smart kid and I liked Jim Starlin's Warlock and Dr. Strange by Steve Englehart because even though they were written and drawn by heads doing cosmic, philosophical acid stuff it was still soap opera action comics with monsters and villains and it fed me on so many levels.

DRE: In your introduction to the first Doom Patrol trade paperback you mentioned that you read the book, When Rabbit Howls, as research for Crazy Jane. That really got me into that book. Has anyone ever told you that you inspired them to study philosophy or other concepts you've touched on?

GM: There have been a few people. Doom Patrol was pretty popular and Steven Shapiro did a well-regarded postmodern study called 'Doom Patrols' which talked about the book a lot. We also used to get letters from people who'd suffered from Multiple Personality Disorder and they told us it had really helped them to find a character like Crazy Jane who they could relate to. I used to say that I wished all their multiples would buy a copy of the comic and boost our sales!

DRE: I don't know how often you read your older work, but what does it bring back when you do read?

GM: Where I was at the time, what I was thinking and also I usually feel as if I'm reading something I've never read before. The older you get, the fresher things become in hindsight. I just got a copy of the second Doom Patrol trade paperback and I thought it was great. Usually as soon as I finish working on something I absolutely hate it and that includes The Invisibles and all the other favorites. It's a kind of post-natal depression. I have to wait a bit before I can look back on it, and then I usually love it all over again, for different reasons.

DRE: How much research do you do?

GM: Not much. I never have time to research. There's always a looming deadline. For something like Doom Patrol it's more along the lines of that's what I was into when I was doing the book rather than me going out and doing dedicated research. Whatever I'm writing in the stories is coming from what I'm doing in the real world. I was 28 when I started Doom Patrol and there was this explosion for me, of art and of 'magic realist' writing by Calvino, Borges or Landolfi, postmodern TV surrealism with things like David Lynch and Vic Reeves. I was into Jan Svankmajer movies, Thomas DeQuincey, Cocteau, Joyce, Anais Nin, Leonora Carrington, Maya Deren and things like that. Whatever new input came into my head, it affected the flavor of the stories I was doing. I was devouring books about Dada, the decadents, the Futurists, Wyndham Lewis, Austin Spare, Situationism and all the usual suspects at the time of Doom Patrol but I stopped reading soon after that.

DRE: You really stopped reading books?

GM: I stopped reading fiction about 1990. I didn't read a lot of anything after that because I was too busy doing stuff and writing. I can't be bothered reading books because I usually know what's going to happen by page three [laughs]. A lot of people still think I read cyberpunk books or loads of Philip K. Dick or whatever but I haven't had any interest in science fiction since a brief but inspirational teenage obsession with the 'New Wave' generation of Moorcock, Ballard and Ellison. I don't know. I like poetry and I prefer experimental, non-linear, automatic or surrealist writing but these days I just read comics and watch DVDs for my fiction dose.

DRE: This may be old news but was the controversy over The Matrix films being like The Invisibles blown out of proportion?

GM: It's really simple. The truth of that one is that design staff on The Matrix were given Invisibles collections and told to make the movie look like my books. This is a reported fact. The Wachowskis are comic book creators and fans and were fans of my work, so it's hardly surprising. I was even contacted before the first Matrix movie was released and asked if I would contribute a story to the website.

It's not some baffling 'coincidence' that so much of The Matrix is plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image, lifted from Invisibles so there shouldn't be much controversy. The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it.

It was just too bad they deviated so far from the Invisibles philosophical template in the second and third movies because they blundered helplessly into boring Catholic theology, proving that they hadn't HAD the 'contact' experience that drove The Invisibles, and they wrecked both
'Reloaded' and 'Revolutions' on the rocks of absolute incomprehension. They should have kept on stealing from me and maybe they would have wound up with something to really be proud of - a movie that could change minds and hearts and worlds.

I love the first Matrix movie which I think is a real work of cinematic genius and very timely but I've now heard from several people who worked on The Matrix and they've all confirmed that they were given Invisibles books as reference. That's how it is. I'm not angry about it anymore, although at one time I was because they made millions from what was basically a Xerox of my work and to be honest, I would be happy with just one million so I didn't have to work thirteen hours of every fucking day, including weekends.

In the end, I was glad they got the ideas out but very disappointed that they blew it so badly and distorted all the Gnostic transcendental aspects that made the first film so strong and potent. If they had any sense, they would have befriended me instead of pissing me off. They seem like nice boys.

DRE: Sebastian O was also released in a trade paperback this year which I haven't read since it came out.

GM: That's like the Matrix too!

That's probably one of the books that made people think I was into cyberpunk or steampunk or whatever. Sebastian O came about because I was reading a lot of stuff by decadent authors and people like Oscar Wilde and Baudelaire. I thought it would be fun to take an Oscar Wilde character and put him into a futuristic Victorian era with computers. Decadent authors were obsessed with artifice and they affected a hatred of gooey, slimy nature so I thought that tied in nicely to ideas about virtual reality which were starting to show up when I was writing the book. I saw virtual reality was the decadent dream come true - a world where everything could be artificial, synthetic and perfectly beautiful.

DRE: Would you want to check out that world?

GM: I would wear his clothes but I don't want to be Sebastian. I don't think he gets any sex and if he does it's a bit mauve.

DRE: As you said, comic books keep going after any writer or artist is done with them, what do you think of Joss Whedon putting the X-Men back into their costumes?

GM: Joss Whedon is doing good work but the costumes change every couple of years regardless. I know the decision to return to a more retro-spandex look was being made by Marvel's licensors because they felt the 'urban' black and yellow look didn't come across well enough on lunchboxes and schoolbooks or on video game screens. They wanted something that was brighter and more colorful. A yellow Wolverine basically. If I'd stayed on the book I would have had to write the costume change too. The new costumes are a bit of a retreat, I have to say.

DRE: John Cassaday does draw them nice though.

GM: Cassaday is doing a great job. He's hitting new peaks all the time.

DRE: What religion did you grow up with?

GM: Nothing [laughs]. My dad was an atheist and my mother was a lapsed Catholic so I didn't understand any of it. I live in Glasgow which is a city torn apart by sectarian violence but somehow, in my naivet, I grew up without grasping any of the alleged difference between Protestants and Catholics. I went to school with Baptists, atheists, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims while some of my friends went to a segregated school that only accepted 'Catholics'. I didn't really question it for some reason and I had no idea I was watching bigotry and separatism in action. I used to go to Sunday School but that was for the free orange juice.

DRE: I read that you felt you had a miserable adolescence.

GM: My childhood was great, then adolescence was awful. I was isolated from people. I went to an all boy's school which was a big mistake because I wasn't gay. I hated it because I didn't know any girls and I lived in a tiny house above a supermarket with my mother and sister for more years than is healthy for a young man. I just sat and read comics and listened to records, all Morrissey-like, until I was 19 when I got a band together and got out. Though I think if I hadn't had that intense horrible time on my own, I just wouldn't be writing for a living today. Making comics got me through my teenage years and disciplined my wayward energies very effectively.

DRE: What's the next thing you'll be doing after you finish your novel?

GM: I want to wrap up Pop Mag!c then I'll probably do something with We3 which is the cybernetic animal comic that's just come out. There are a few people interested in doing a movie version so I fancy writing the script for that if I can. Then I'm doing 12 issues Superman with Frank Quitely for DC's new 'All-Star' line.

plasticfangs said:
The opening to "Seven Soldiers" was awesome. Almost frustratingly o - how can he make us love a bunch of chracters so quickly, only to tur around and off the whole let of 'em? Bastard.

As far as Morrision's persona goes...I love it. His love of rock n' roll (namely British Rock N' Roll), his impeccable sense of dress....his absolute assertions on the reality of magic...he is defined a character as any he has written.

I wish he had talk about his "Comic Writers Are The New Rock Idols" theory, or his feelings on his biggest competition, Mr. Moore...but still, a great article.